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Rubio meticulous, Bush indifferent

By Dylan Byers

02/12/13 09:47 AM EST

BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins travels to Coral Gables, Fla., in search of the Republican party's future, and finds two presidential hopefuls -- Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush -- with radically different approaches to the media:

The prevailing complaint among Rubio's Republican critics here is that he has allowed an obsessive preoccupation with his public image keep him from growing into the leader they want him to be. ... One exasperated Republican recalled spending close to an hour listening to Rubio agonize over a National Journal article that criticized how his leadership PAC was spending its funds. The Republican tried to reason with the Senator that "no one outside DC will care about this," but it was useless.

"He just lets these little things get to him, and he worries too much," the Republican said. "I'm just like, 'Marco, calm down.'"

Jeb Bush, on the other hand, has managed to adopt a certain cavalier, politics-be-damned attitude in the years since he left the governor's office that's endeared him to the insiders; vocally championing liberal immigration reform, lobbing bombs at his own party when he thinks they deserve it, and responding to media speculation about his presidential aspirations with a too-cool-for-school shrug. ... This contrast hasn't escaped Miami's Republicans, one of whom compared Rubio's meticulous care for his public image to Bush's apparent indifference by describing a pair of recent visits by New York Times reporters.

"When Jim Rutenberg came down here to do a profile, Jeb blew him off. When Mark Leibovich came down, Marco took him to a Dolphins game," the Republican said.